


Do not resent the constellations

by Solshine



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, POV Duck Newton, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, TAZ Amnesty, spoilers up until end of amnesty, that’s it that’s the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23048389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: The cobalt blue soul mark on Duck Newton’s shoulder is not written in any alphabet used on Earth. Which just figures, really.
Relationships: Minerva/Duck Newton
Comments: 26
Kudos: 114





	Do not resent the constellations

“I guess you probably don’t even have ‘em,” teenage Duck says one night as he shares some 7-Eleven parking lot time with Minerva.

Well, “shares.” Minerva invited herself to Duck’s 7-Eleven parking lot alone time, as she invites herself to most things this time of the week. “Soulmate marks, I mean. In the ghost world or whatever.“

“I am not a ghost, Duck Newton, and of course we have soulmate marks!” Minerva says, making Duck wince against her volume. He eyes her glowing blue shape, more eerie than usual in the yellow shine of the streetlight, but can’t see any name on her any more than he can see her face. Maybe it’s something only other ghosts can see.

“Too bad,” Duck says. “They suck.” 

He hates the weird, unreadable mark on his shoulder, the blunt curls and crosses jammed up against one another in bold cobalt blue like someone was trying to make a very enthusiastic artistic statement with a chisel tip sharpie. Other kids are always asking about it if they catch a glimpse. He’s looked up language after language, but none of them make the mark on his shoulder into a name.

Maybe the worst part of this whole magic hero bullshit is how much awful sense his mark makes in the light of it.

Too late he realizes maybe Minerva’s got a great soulmate and Duck’s cynicism might hurt her feelings.

“I mean, you know, mine sucks,” he adds lamely, scuffing his sneakers over the asphalt. “Mileage may vary, I guess.”

“There are more important things, Duck —” Minerva begins, and then vanishes.

Duck snorts and sucks on his Slurpee. More important things than destiny?

Yeah. Duck couldn’t agree more.

* * *

Duck doesn’t want to be a chosen hero. He doesn’t want a talking sword, and he doesn’t want a weird fuckin’ magic language Narnia soulmate, whoever they are.

Duck wants to be a forest ranger. So he works on that instead.

Eventually, Minerva stops showing up. Duck is relieved. Minerva was real nice and all, and sometimes Duck thinks he hears a rustle or feels a presence behind his shoulder like everyone does now and then, and he turns around ready to tell Minerva to leave him alone or ask how she’s been, and there’s nobody. But conversational partners that everyone can see and hear are so much easier to manage. As are ones from earth, for that matter.

If he misses her, now and then, just a little bit, that’s fine. You miss a lot of people, growing up, you make choices and you choose paths and that means you lose people sometimes. He’s sure she’s found some other hero, someone who wants it, someone who won’t disappoint her.

Maybe she misses him too.

* * *

Duck gets older and thinks he probably made Minerva up. Which is, no mistake, absolutely bonkers, but makes more sense then this destiny thing. Anyway, everyone goes through it in high school. Duck figures you get one teenage mental breakdown free on account of hormones or whatever.

He’s more creative, obviously, then he gives himself credit for, he thinks as he recalls the… dreams? — of her glowing outline, her booming voice. The hero thing is pretty out there too, but he can probably blame that on too many comic books or something. Minerva herself, all broad-shouldered 6 feet and change of her, shining like the restless departed spirit of a neon lamp, he would never have guessed he had in him.

He finally gets to be a forest ranger. Duck pins his name tag – “Newton” — to his shirt for the first time, and he’s prouder than if he _had_ saved the world.

His uniform does a good job of covering the mark on the shoulder, which is even more stark than it used to be against the paleness of his skin. Duck Newton hasn’t worn a sleeveless shirt in years.

That mark is still there, is the thing, even after the dreams disappear into fuzzy impossibilities in his past. it still isn’t any language they speak on Earth, as far as Duck can tell. 

He tries not to think about it.

* * *

Minerva comes back, and Duck Newton’s life immediately goes to shit.

He’s not blaming her, it’s just… Well, a little bit maybe he’s blaming her. Logically Duck knows it was investigating Pigeon’s fire that got him roped into all this, but to be fair it’s the same ‘all this’ that Minerva’s been trying to rope him into since the beginning.   
  
He can’t quite manage to be mad about it, though. 

She’s still badgering him about practicing with the dumb fuckin’ sword, and embracing his destiny or whatever. She’s still laughing that big old laugh, outlines of fists on the outlines of hips, still shouting his name like punctuation. And now here Duck is too, actually practicing with the dumb _fuckin’_ sword, which he still hates, for the record, and if not exactly embracing his destiny, at least giving it a sort of manly one-armed side hug with a shoulder pat. 

He’s learning more about Minerva, as well, than she ever let on when he was younger.

“Aubrey went and matched her mark to a girl up at Amnesty Lodge, if you can believe it,” he says one day during a break in a Minerva-monitored practice session. “I’m happy for ‘em, I guess.” 

Aubrey’s mark isn’t in a recognizable alphabet, either, and for a second he’d wondered… But no, the Sylvan emblazoned on her right hand in rich chrysanthemum yellow is made of delicate, scratchy loops and dots, and not even a serious difference in handwriting can relate the language on Aubrey’s skin to the meaningless shapes on his.

“You do not seem to care much more for soulmates now then you did in your youth, Duck Newton!” Minerva says. Duck takes a drink from his bottle of water and resists the urge to tell her to keep it down. In the darkened yard behind his apartment building, where even his muttering to her sounds loud, it's hard to keep in mind nobody can hear her but him. He kind of remembers the conversation she's talking about, though.

“You said once you had soulmate marks, right, Minnie?” he says. “Your people or whatever, I mean.” Minerva nods and Duck screws the cap back on his bottle. “Did anyone have, like, alien soulmates? Like Aubrey,” he adds quickly. “Her mark is in Sylvan. Y’know.” He’s not sure why he doesn’t want to tell Minerva about his mark, except that he doesn’t tell anyone and he’s spent so long denying that he had any kind of destiny that now it feels silly to admit.

“Yes, the advent of travel between and communication with other worlds made extraterrestrial soulmates fairly common!” she declares. 

“That’s rough,” Duck says, standing up. “It’s complicated enough already.”

“Still a more promising prospect then if my soulmate came from my own world, Duck Newton,” she says, and it’s just a little bit more subdued than usual. Duck cringes.

“Damn, yeah, sorry. Didn’t think about that. You ain’t found ‘em then?”

He almost says “so you have an alien soulmate,” but it’s implied, right, and it’s rude to ask anything more than that anyhow.

“No, and likely will not. But I do not mind!” 

Even though Duck doesn’t want _his_ alien soulmate, the thought that Minerva has given up on finding hers spikes a surprising sadness through his chest. 

“Never know,“ he says. “Maybe after we save the world, you can join one of them… Y’know, internet sites.” He hefts Beacon. “Show me that one-two thing with the feet again.”

But Minerva flickers out of view as he says it, and Duck sighs.

“Well, there are two steps, _Duck Newton,_ ” Beacon wheedles, now that the sentimental soulmate talk is safely over. “I think with time, even _you_ might be able to _puzzle it out_.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Duck mutters, and tries to do the step like Minerva’s outline had, and tries not to imagine Minerva, wherever she is, by herself.

Then he stops trying. He pictures her deliberately, thinks of her filling with light whatever empty space she goes to when she’s not here. And he’s never been a big woowoo believer type (however ironic that might be given circumstances) but he hopes maybe she feels that. 

Maybe she thinks about him, her dumb chosen hero out here trying his best, and feels a little less alone.

* * *

It doesn’t seem to matter that Duck has gone decades before without hearing from her. It doesn’t matter that when he has seen her, it’s only ever been for minutes at a time, or even that she’s never actually been _here._ He’s never shot the shit for hours with her, or shared a beer, or hugged her. 

She says _my friend_ like it’s a goodbye, and then she blinks out of sight and suddenly Duck misses her every damn day.   
  
Leo and Duck share stories about her. They remember her training pep talks and speeches about responsibility, and mimic her delivery of their full names. They assure each other that there’s no reason to assume she didn’t get to safety, that her world survived an apocalypse once already, that she’s a tough lady, after all.   
  
It still feels like they’re mourning her.   
  
Duck’s never had to be a normal man before. The last time he didn’t have Minerva’s gifts shielding and strengthening him, he was just a skinny kid. He’s lived his entire adult life with Minerva at his back, even when she wasn’t there, even when he didn’t think she was real. And it’s that, more than anything, that makes it feel like he’s really lost her. 

The unreadable name on his shoulder feels more like a bad joke than ever. Duck knows that some people think you're always destined to meet your soulmate, but you have to pay attention and make the right choices to keep them, and some people think you're only guaranteed the possibility of meeting them. But Duck can lay that argument to rest now, because regular dipshits without magic or destinies or whatever, they don't meet mysterious alien soulmates, now do they? 

He doesn't even care about that. He just hates the reminder stamped on his body of an unfinished story with half of the pages ripped out.

He burns his hand on the coffeemaker one morning, something that never would have happened to him before, and he drops the carafe in surprise. _Right,_ he thinks, staring at the shattered mess. _I’m not Special anymore._ But then he gets down and starts picking up the big pieces of glass, and one cuts his thumb, and it shocks him all over again, somehow. He kneels there on the floor clutching at the injury, blood welling between his fingers, and thinks _Right. She’s gone._

He doesn’t even _own_ any fucking band-aids.

* * *

When Duck, standing in the shadow of the Greenbank Telescope, looks up and sees the glow of Minerva through the window, his goddamn heart stops.  
  
For the rest of his life (however long that is) that very particular color blue will probably always snag his eye and bring Minerva to mind, and he thought it was going to be a small sad thing in the back of his head forever but that's _her._ It's really, actually her, and she's looking up and she's smiling —

“Hello, Duck Newton!” comes a voice behind him, and he spins around and she's there too. Duck kind of wants to look back over his shoulder to see if she's still in there with Sarah Drake, but there's a part of him that's afraid she'll disappear if he looks away.

“It seems like you've kept up with your training,” Minerva says, “with your strong, muscular legs!” Like she's back from _vacation._

“Where the fuck have you _been?”_ he asks, and he can hear the awe and the pain in his own voice. She brightly brushes off an explanation about digging herself out from a pile of rubble like it's silly, uninteresting, but she sounds tired _,_ and it has genuinely never occurred to Duck before now that Minerva's bulletproof cheer might not be effortless. 

She's even taller than he remembers. 

“God,” he says, his throat tight. “It's so fucking good to see you.”

He can't see her face, of course, but he can tell she's grinning.

“It's good to see you too, Duck Newton.”

He faces down the bombom with a sword in each hand and an edge of disbelieving laughter just under his heroic banter. He uses his swords to stab and hurt it. Why the hell not? The lady knows what she’s talking about.

It’s nothing, though, on when that portal opens.

His brain feels like it’s splitting right the hell open, and then she goes in moments from a distant being approaching alarmingly fast, to a familiar silhouette, to a _person,_ huge and real and _here._

When the creature and the world of light are gone, she reaches up to him in a mirror of minutes before. This time when he reaches back their hands actually touch, her fingers wrapping around his wrist and his (not quite) around hers. Minerva’s hand is callused and warm. Duck pulls her to her feet and he realizes he’s smiling, smiling so hard his cheeks ache, and why shouldn’t he? She’s back, she’s fine. Leo’s fine too, everyone’s okay, visions be damned.

And Minerva… she has a _face._ She has a mouth, reflecting his smile back at him, and skin, rich blue patterns painted over her smooth head. She has eyes, that same tone of blue but brighter — far brighter, unearthly. 

Her cheeks are flushed with the excitement of the fight as she looks back at him and says “You are exactly as I pictured you, Duck Newton!”

Duck laughs.

Everyone’s not okay, it turns out, but that comes later.

* * *

A month passes in a blink. He barely remembers Ned’s memorial. There’s rebuilding, and organizing, and worry and fear and not nearly enough sleep. He’s grateful, actually, to have Aubrey and Minerva stuffed into his little apartment — Aubrey on the couch, mostly because Minerva is too big for it, and Minerva in the spare room. He wakes up in the night to the sounds of Aubrey thumping around in the kitchen, and comes home after work to Minerva doing inscrutable alien tai chi in his living room, and breathes a little easier knowing that they, at least, are safe.

The Pine Guard has, for once, nothing that needs done tonight, and Duck is planning on taking full advantage of it. Which is to say he’s going to do absolutely nothing besides take a shower and eat, like, three grilled cheese sandwiches.

He comes out of the bathroom in sweats and damp hair to find Minerva sitting on the couch, oiling her sword. 

“Aubrey Little is on a date!” Minerva looks up and announces. “She says not to wait up!” Duck rolls his eyes.   
  
“Right,” he says. “Wasn’t planning to.” 

He pops a Fleetwood Mac album into his CD player, and heads into the kitchen to start constructing grilled cheeses.

Behind him he hears the gentle clank of Minerva setting her zwiehander down on the protesting coffee table, and the thud of bare footsteps that have never lived in an apartment. So he's ready for Minerva's loud voice inches behind him when it comes, if not for what she says.

“Have you seen the latest episode of the Bachelor television show, Duck Newton?” Minerva blares. “She could do _so_ much better!”

Duck pauses with the refrigerator door open to direct a baffled look at a beaming Minerva.

“You watch The Bachelor?” he asks. “I mean, that's fine, do you, I'm just surprised—”

He's cut off by Minerva's huge, pleased laugh.

“It is a ruse, Duck Newton!” she proclaims. “I am learning to blend in as a human! Aubrey Little says it is a ‘safe bet,’ because the women on the program can always do better!”

Duck feels a grin pulling at his lips and doesn't fight it.

“You got me,” he says. “Nice one. You’ll blend right in.”

She won’t, of course. Minerva might or might not pass as human, but she’ll never make it as ordinary. He wouldn’t have another way.

“You want a grilled cheese?” he asks.

“I would love a grilled cheese sandwich, thank you!” she proclaims, and pulls out a chair at the kitchen table.

They talk as Duck slices sharp cheddar, because he’s too fuckin’ old for kraft singles, and butters his iron skillet. He offers a few very human samples of small talk about humidity she can use, and she tries to explain her favorite sport from her home planet. Duck plates a sandwich for her and throws another one into the skillet for himself, then turns around to put it on the table.

Aubrey and Minerva went thrift store shopping as soon as Minerva got to earth. There wasn’t a lot of selection for a lady Minerva's size, but she isn’t picky, and ended up with mostly sweats and hippie skirts and things crudely modified with Duck’s kitchen shears. She wears them all with ease and elegance, looking comfortable rather than slapdash like you’d think.

The soft gray sweatshirt she’s wearing now has had the neckline widened a little unevenly. Minerva is mid gesture as she explains what you do with the score baton once you get it into the home zone, so the shirt has slipped down a little to expose a patch of skin beneath her right collarbone that Duck has never seen before.

In a pale unobtrusive beige, like a strange birthmark against her darker skin, is the name _Wayne._

Duck stares at it. Minerva is still talking about the score baton. The plate is still in Duck’s hand.

After a minute, Minerva's gesturing slows and stops, along with her cheerful explanation.

“Duck Newton?” she asks cautiously.

Her hands lower, and the collar of the sweatshirt eclipses the name again. Duck blinks and shakes himself, and puts the sandwich down in front of Minerva hastily, the clank of the plate loud in the little kitchen.

She doesn’t know what he was looking at, Duck realizes. She doesn’t know Wayne is _him_.

“S-sorry,” he stammers. “I got, uh, got a little lost in my head there. For a second. I guess.”

He smells something burning and spins back around to the stove, cursing as he pulls his smoking sandwich off the skillet with his fingertips and slaps it onto a plate. 

“Are you unwell?” Minerva asks. He doesn’t turn around, keeps his eyes on his shitty sandwich. The edges are black, and it’s completely uncooked on one side.

“I’m fine,” he blurts, which is a lie if he’s ever told one, so of course he’s still talking, it’s too late to shut himself up. “I’m sick, maybe, or it’s. Fuck, it’s the stress, or — I mean, there’s no reason why I wouldn’t be sick, you know, or uh, fuck. Getting sick. Maybe. Or I’m sick because of the stress, or… I gotta go.” 

He grabs the sandwich and flees to his room, shutting the door behind him a little harder than he means to.

He halfway expects Minerva to follow and knock on his door. He almost wants her to. But one minute passes, and then another, and the sound of “Everywhere” on the stereo gives way to “Caroline,” and although his stomach twists at the sound of her footfalls, they only return her to the sofa.

Maybe Wayne _isn’t_ him. There are lots of Waynes. Now that she’s on earth, maybe she’ll meet one. 

If he didn’t already know that was nonsense, the awful squeezing feeling around his chest when he thinks of Minerva matching her mark to some other Wayne tells him as much. Why did he never even consider that the unreadable alien name on his shoulder might be Minerva’s? Because he’s an idiot, is why, because he’s a _goddamn moron._ Because she wasn’t his _soulmate,_ she’s always just been Minerva, but now… but now…

He’ll tell her tomorrow.

* * *

He does not tell her tomorrow. 

It’s just such a long day, and everyone’s busy, Minerva with moving the stock from the destroyed public library out of Dave’s garage and into the library’s new temporary location, and Duck with helping drive lodge folks up to H2Whoa after work. When he gets home he’s not up for the long conversation this is definitely gonna be, so it goes on the back burner and Duck goes to bed.

He doesn't tell her the next day, or the next week. Minerva never asks what had him so rattled, and honestly he doesn't even know what to _say._ He considers just stepping out of his room with his mark exposed, but he doesn't have any tank tops and if he walked into the kitchen shirtless he thinks Aubrey would most likely distract from the situation with an untoward amount of hooting.

The longer he goes without saying anything, the more the doubt niggles, and the more he wants to get it right. Duck isn't good at speeches, at timing, at big cinematic moments. If life was fair, he'd have gotten that along with his Chosen strength and ability to take a hit. Who wants a big hero who can't get the hang of making an entrance or a declaration?

Not that he's waiting to make a declaration. That's… that's skipping a step, probably, Minerva is his friend and there's lots of ways to be a soulmate. Minerva is a strong beautiful alien lady, a cinematic moment all her own, and Duck's name on her chest is the same drab color of his khaki pants, and Duck is… not making assumptions, all right? 

She _did_ choose him, though. That's not nothing.

* * *

There's two worlds and an impending war or whatever to worry about, anyway. They prep to save the world with the singlemindedness and specificity of people who actually believe they might succeed. To watch Aubrey and Leo and Janelle and everyone go, you'd think they'd averted an apocalypse before.

It makes him miss Ned. Hell, a lot of things make him miss Ned, but he remembers when he was newly unchosen and feeling like a cartoon turtle that crawled out of its shell, squishy and vulnerable. (Not an actual turtle, of course, whose shell contains its spine. It's a common misconception, but the metaphor is solid.) Duck had lumped Ned in with all their magic friends with powers and wings and sharp teeth, somehow, had felt like the only dumb, normal asshole in the Pine Guard. But Ned had only ever been a big hairy hoarder with a closet full of skeletons and stolen goods and middle names. Ned said he was a coward so often they all believed it, even as he charged monsters, gunned a classic car down forested trails, dove in front of bullets. 

By the time Duck was popped back into his turtle shell, it was too late to apologize. If Ned was here now, Duck would be able to look up at him over the top of a planning meeting and raise an eyebrow that said ‘This is some crazy shit, right?’ and he knows Ned would raise the eyebrow right back at him.

Instead he stands over a map and talks about eluding the FBI as though watching a lot of Criminal Minds qualifies him to have an opinion on this shit. 

Minerva is a solid, reassuring presence next to him as he blows smoke up the ass of all of destiny and Kepler West Virginia, and not just because she's got the closest thing to experience of all of them. It's not the soulmates thing either, which he still doesn't know how to say. She's Minerva; she's been here with him, on and off, since this started. As weird as it seems, having the glowing blue swordfighting mentor from his young adulthood sitting in his kitchen in track pants is reassuring. Consistency, y’know. 

The way her smile blows on some hot, dim ember in his chest might be the soulmates thing, though.

* * *

One hundred and thirty four seconds is barely enough time to save the world, much less have that long conversation he's been putting off.

They're running, they're yelling. Minerva is a freight train as she clears the way for him, without a question because she trusts him, Aubrey and Thacker following because they trust him too. There's a countdown, viciously precise, ringing in Duck’s head. Ninety eight seconds. 

It's too little time to have left with these people he loves, so this is just going to have to work.

They take cover and brace for the impact. Thirty five seconds. This is a before and after decision however it shakes down, and he’s still never told her, he wanted the right moment and now he’s just left with this one. But Minerva puts her hand on his shoulder and Duck turns his head and looks up into her blue blue _blue_ eyes, and he thinks maybe this was the right moment all along.

“I’m with you to the end, Duck Newton!” Minerva declares with a fierce grin. Duck feels himself grinning back. He leans in close, close enough that those eyes are all he can see, blue like a brain full of electric summer sky.

“You can call me Wayne,” he whispers.

Nine seconds.

He sees the thought land, the happy shock spread across Minerva’s face, and he opens his mouth to laugh. But before he can get the breath to do it, the world explodes.

* * *

Minerva says “Wayne Newton” again and again, with such delighted relish that it almost makes Duck like his name. “Wayne Newton,” she says, every other sentence the way she hasn’t done in a while, something close to awe lighting her face up like a full moon. “ _Wayne Newton.”_

They save two worlds, a thousand worlds, each other. She comes with him to Earth. She comes with him to Brazil.

They lay in bed, a few dozen long conversations later, and Minerva traces the mark on Duck’s shoulder and teaches him the letters of her lost alphabet. His finger follows after hers.

“Minerva,” he says. He’s not reading it, not yet; the letters don’t mean things automatically in his head the way English does to him, the way his own name does when he runs a thumb over it on Minerva’s chest. Minerva‘s language is still a code he needs to break each time, letter by letter. Right now there is only one person in the universe who can truly read it, but he’ll get it eventually, and someday there will be more.

“Y’know, I used to think my soulmate was gonna be some kinda grateful alien princess in a gold lamé bikini like Star Trek or something,” Duck confides. “Like, as part of the hero thing.”

“Are you disappointed?“ Minerva teases, and Duck snorts.

“Fuck no, that sounds awful,” he says, grimacing. “It always did. I used to wish it said some shit like Jennifer or something. There were five Jennifers in my graduating class.” He props himself up on an elbow. “I’m glad it was you.”

“As am I, Wayne Newton,” Minerva smiles.

“I seem to remember you saying you didn’t care if you ever met your soulmate,” Duck says, taking his turn to tease her now. Minerva shakes her head.

“What I said was I did not mind,” she corrects. “I gathered that it was an Earth name, and I assumed it would be one of my chosen heroes, who I would only ever know as a telepathic hologram. Moreover, since I was led to believe that it was _not_ you,” she adds with a pointed look, “The appointment of my soulmate as a new chosen would suggest that the gate had moved without the accomplishment of my mission, or you had perished in battle. Neither were appealing.”

Duck chews on that for a second.

“So what you’re saying is,” he says, starting to smirk, “You decided you didn’t need your soulmate because you already had me?”

“That is a misrepresentation of my words, Ranger Wayne Newton,” Minerva says, but props herself up on her elbow too and leans in close. 

“But it is not inaccurate,” she whispers.

Duck groans and flops back on the pillow. 

“See, I was goofin’ and then you went and made it all sincere. Now I gotta say something sincere too.”

Minerva laughs — not big and loud, but low and rich, as she lowers her head to chuckle into Duck’s hair.

“I am not picky,” she says, and even muffled he can hear her grin. “I would accept ‘I love you’ as your reciprocal sincerity.”

Good god, now that she had the power of jokes she really is gonna be unstoppable.

“Yeah?” he laughs. “Would that satisfy your demand for genuine emotional exchange?” Duck tips his head back on the pillow far enough to peck a kiss onto her chin.

“I love you,” he says, and it isn’t the credits rolling on his space opera, it isn’t the big reward at the end of his hero’s journey to a swelling orchestral number. 

It’s the title screen instead, and doesn’t that just beat all?


End file.
